ABSTRACT
We currently live in a world dominated by neo-liberal political ideologies
where market forces and their rationalist philosophies underpin our social
and economic organization, where ‘good’ decisions are deemed to be those
that are able to identify and provide a tangible and measurable balance of
benefits, adjudicated by cost-benefit ratios and statistical quantification.
However, as we have seen, little, if any, accord is given to the principles and
values that underpin such evaluations. Whilst the western world aspires to
increase the range of low-cost goods and efficiency of production and provi-
sion of services, it reaps instability in the global labor market, the financial
markets and environmental degradation in the form of atmospheric pollu-
tion, biodiversity decline and land degradation (Beck, 1992) – all of which are
leading to catastrophic climate change in the form of global warming.
